


A Man's Role (According To Lincoln Burrows)

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 02:12:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10584270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: Post S3 Jane/Linc reunion, in the which he believes her to be dead, so she surprises the hell out of him when she turns up alive.





	

When LJ was a baby, and he slept in those baby-contortion ways, Lincoln always wanted to adjust him. Lisa always told him not to worry about it. His neck wasn’t going to grow crooked just because LJ slept in his car seat with his head all the way over on his own shoulder.

She had been right of course.  _Poor Lisa._

Lincoln looked from his sleeping son back to Sofia. She looked ridiculously small in the white hospital bed, but when their eyes met, she smiled sleepily at him. “You should take him back to my apartment,” she said, indicating LJ, who had curled up—contortionist fashion—in a chair next to her hospital bed. “You can both sleep there.” Her eyes moved over his face, and he knew he must look like shit, just from her expression. “You need to rest,” she all but whispered.

“Nah,” he murmured. “I just need a coffee. I’ll be back in a bit,” he said. Gently sliding his hand out of hers, he gave her a half-hearted smile and left the room. In the hallway, he looked right then left, wondering the fastest route to a coffee machine, or if he’d actually have to find the cafeteria.

He didn’t want to leave her alone at the hospital, and it was in part because he just didn’t trust her out of his sight for too long. The danger was supposedly over, but he couldn’t entirely believe that, not now. When she’d been shot on the steps of the museum, there had been this moment when everything stilled and he’d seen Lisa, Veronica, Jane, and Sara all crumpled in her place, and the last thing he’d been capable of doing was leaving her there. LJ had been the voice of reason, and Lincoln acknowledged now how much he’d needed his son in that moment. It hadn’t been that LJ needed him—which had been the driving force for the last two torturous weeks of his life—but they needed each other, and he hoped he had many more days to experience that.

And he needed Sofia to be alive too. It wasn’t anything more than a primal need not to have another woman dead because of him. He felt it was overwhelmingly essential that he protect her, to keep her safe from bastards like Whistler. If only someone had protected Veronica and Lisa from him, they would still be alive.

If someone had kept Jane from ever meeting his father, she too would still be alive.

And Sara…oh Sara. If only there had been anyone to protect Sara from loving Michael.

He closed his eyes, leaned against the wall and slid down it until his ass hit the floor. The need for coffee faded away, and instead he was paralyzed by the thoughts he had hoped to avoid forever if possible.

Of all the dead bodies that lay in a figurative trail behind him, he only mourned those women. It was the strangest thing.

He was sorry his father had died, he was sorry he hadn’t had more time to ask the questions he’d had for the old man, but it was only Lisa, Veronica, Jane, and Sara’s faces that conjured up real grief inside him. He imagined all of them, in their own ways, would find it ludicrous—if not completely insulting—that he felt such failure in not protecting them somehow. They had all been strong women, different from each other in life, but vaguely the same in Lincoln’s mind in their deaths. They were fascinatingly beautiful and real, and each had been kind to him at one time or another.

Every instinct he had, everything that made him a man told him he should have taken care of them. He should have made sure they were safe. Yet each of them were gone, dead long before their time was truly over, and he couldn’t help the weight of guilt that had settled in his chest.

Keeping Sofia alive seemed like the only thing he could do, the only possible penance that might even dent the debt he owed.

Michael’s leaving, the pursuing of his own weight of guilt, was very different than Lincoln staying behind. Michael didn’t care if he lived or died in the quest of that end. Lincoln knew he had to live to make sure LJ and Sofia were all right. He had to choose this time, between that and his brother, and he’d been grateful Michael hadn’t asked him to come with him. He couldn’t have denied Michael if he’d asked, so the silence had been welcomed.

Pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose, he took a deep breath. Maybe Sofia was right; if he got some sleep maybe he wouldn’t feel like curling up in the fetal position and bawling like a baby.

He opened his eyes and put his hands flat on the cool tile to push himself to his feet. There was a moment, as he got his feet under him, that he knew it was imperative that he get some sleep the sooner the better, because he saw a dead woman walking straight toward him.

He blinked and shook his head to clear it, but when he opened his eyes again, she wasn’t gone; in fact, she was even closer to him than the moment before. He put his hands out before he stumbled backwards into the wall, and he heard her say his name. The world disappeared for a split second, and he thought he was actually passing out, but disgust at his weakness suddenly stiffened his spine and he pressed himself firmly to the plaster before focusing on the fact that a woman he believed to be dead did stand in front of him, very much alive.

“Are you all right?” Jane Phillips asked.

Lincoln gaped for a moment and then he repeated, “Am  _I_  all right?  _Am I all right?_  I thought you were dead! Where have you been?” he demanded and then he suddenly grabbed her, wrapping his arms around her and forcing her body up against his.

Considering he’d only ever seen this woman one other time in his life, the fact that she didn’t necessarily want to be embraced should have registered more quickly, but with his arms clamped securely around her, she was unlikely to get away. It wasn’t until her voice, “Lincoln. Lincoln! Let me go!” and her insistent wriggling against him finally disrupted his euphoria that he let her go. She stumbled somewhat inelegantly away from him and perched her hands on her hips. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked.

He laughed. The sound sort of jumped out of his mouth, and then more laughter erupted in his chest, so much so that he covered his face with his hands and bent over at the waist. He laughed until he cried, and even when a nurse came over to make sure they didn’t need anything and Jane spoke to her in Spanish, he couldn’t stop. After he motioned to the doorway of the hospital room he stood outside of and she looked in and saw LJ and Sofia both sleeping, he allowed her to grab him by the elbow and lead him down the hallway and outside into the fading sunlight.

In the settling heat of the early evening, he slumped against the building and finally got control of himself. He looked up into her somber face and said, “I’m sorry, I’ve just…”

When he seemed unable to continue she supplied, “Been under a lot of stress?” Then she smiled a little, but it was very little. He sensed she was sympathetic, but she was all business, and that left little room for comradery.

Or maybe she just thought he was a fucking idiot. That could have been it, too.

He sighed, rolling his head back on his shoulders and looking up at the sky above him. “That is the fucking understatement of the century, but I’ll go with it.”

“Why did you think I was dead?” she asked. “Is that what LJ thought?”

“No, no,” Lincoln shook his head, dropping his gaze back to hers. “I just assumed—I haven’t even had a chance to ask him what happened, how he got snatched. They’ve killed everyone else, Jane, I just figured they got you too.”

She rubbed her right hand against her left shoulder with a soft gesture. “They tried, but they didn’t succeed. I’ve been watching this back and forth you’ve had for the last couple of days, but I didn’t want to mess up whatever you had going on. I wanted to wait until you and your brother were together to let you know what’s happened back in the States. Where is he?”

Lincoln scrubbed a hand against his scalp agitatedly. “He left. He has some unfinished business with the bitch that killed Sara. He left,” he said again, only because he didn’t know what else to say.

“He’s going to need help, isn’t he?” she asked.

Lincoln’s eyes had wandered from her face to her shoulder when she indicated that she’d been hurt, but afterwards they had drifted down her body and he suddenly remembered one wayward thought he’d had in the drive from the safe house (that hadn’t been all that safe) to meeting up with Michael at the border. Aldo had been explaining how Jane had come to work with him, and Lincoln had had a very male reaction to the blonde-haired woman who had saved his life a couple of times in the space of a few hours.

“Lincoln?” she said when he didn’t respond to her first question.

Guiltily, his eyes came back to hers. “Uh, what?”

“Your brother? Don’t you think he needs help? He can’t think he can stand against three of The Company’s agents.”

“Three? No, it’s just Gretchen and Whistler, and I don’t think Whistler’s an agent. If he is, he’s one of the dumbest—“ he stopped when he saw the look on her face. “What?”

“I saw three of them get into a car together less than two hours ago and leave the city. The dark haired woman and the Australian went to a bar and picked up the third guy. He was wearing a fishing hat.”

Lincoln shrugged. “Whistler kept saying he was a fisherman, so who the hell knows? Michael found some stuff at Whistler’s girlfriend’s apartment and he took off. I gave him the keys to the car.”

“No plan?” she asked.

“I couldn’t go with him—I needed to stay here.”

“I agree,” she said. “But I could go after Michael.” She paused and their eyes came firmly together. “If you want me to.”

Lincoln wanted to hug her again, but he restrained himself. “You’d do well to walk away, honey. Just fly off and pretend you never knew Aldo Burrows or his sons.”

Her eyes narrowed and she looked intently at his face. “That’s not a no,” she said, a real grin tugging at her lips.

Lincoln sighed. “Mike’s gonna need all the help he can get. And you can see what good I am—inappropriately groping women I hardly know and then getting fucking hysterical over it.”

“You didn’t grope me,” she said, her eyes softening. “I’d have flattened you for that.”

“I believe it,” he said, dropping his own gaze down to the pavement below their feet. “You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, Jane. But I can’t ask you to do that. Up until a few minutes ago, I believed I was responsible for your death.”

She moved close to him then, her hands reaching out and coming to rest against his biceps before sliding up just slightly to his shoulders. “You aren’t responsible for any of this. I learned a long time ago we may not be able to beat them, but we can’t let them just get away with it either.”

Lincoln felt heat flare through him because of her nearness, but he didn’t move. “Understanding that in my head doesn’t make it any easier on my conscience somehow,” he said, though his eyes feasted themselves on her full lips, and he thought maybe the press of her mouth to his might make his conscience shut the hell up for a while.

“Would knowing that Sara Tancredi’s alive help?” she asked, and Lincoln’s eyes moved rapidly from her mouth to her eyes, his sharply indrawn breath enough of an answer. “I need to find your brother and let him know that she’s alive and well, and if not for her, I wouldn’t have been able to locate you very easily.” 

“He’s got a cell phone,” Lincoln said.

Jane smiled again, and then leaning up a little, she brushed her lips over his mouth softly, invitingly. “We ought to call him then, don’t you think?”

The impulse that streaked through him then could not be ignored, and in a lightning fast move, he reversed their positions so that she was against the wall. Cupping her face in his hands, he kissed her for all he was worth, his lips gentle but hungry, and Jane, for all her unwelcoming reaction to his earlier hug, received him warmly.

Pressing himself against her felt about as good as anything he could presently remember, but he ended the kiss before he got too riled up. Pulling back, he rubbed his thumb over her reddened lips caressingly.  _Later_. There would be time for this later.

Reaching into his back pocket, he presented his cell phone to her. “Let me see if I can get him on the line.”

 


End file.
